FAQ's

(Questions of a Nature that Merit Frequent Asking and Infrequent Answering)

How did the band form?

Kurt, Evan, Theo, and Walt (our original drummer) were all friends from college, so we pretty much all hung out any way before we officially "banded". Robert was recruited via CraigsList.

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What genre of music are you?

It's cliche, we know, but we like to think of ourselves as hard to categorize. We don't really sound like any other bands (that we know of). You could call us "Alternative" without offending us. We probably wouldn't raise to many eyebrows to "Geek-rock" as well. We're definitely not 4-on-the-floor hard-rockers. And we hate emo. Seriously. We were making fun of emo back before it was popular to make fun of emo.

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Who are your influences?

Our influences are wide and varied, but if it helps, some of our favorite bands are U2, Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nine Inch Nails, Flogging Molly, Rammstein, and Vienna Teng, to name a few. Also old-school Foo Fighters, A Perfect Circle, Stone Temple Pilots, and Thomas Newman. We could go on and on. Moby. Dresden Dolls. The Beatles. Stop me.

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Why "Blind Satellite"?

It's deeply symbolic, not to mention ironic and tech-savvy. Or... well, actually... Band naming is somewhere between root canal and childbirth on the chart of drawn-out and painful but ultimately necessary experiences. After much, much deliberation (like, literally three years), we agreed that of all the ideas we had heard, Blind Satellite sat at the intersection of "we don't hate it" and "the domain name is available". Thus, a band-name was born. And yes, we know it abbreviates BS. We've opted to not care.

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So you guys do this for a living?

Well, yes and no. Ideally we'd like to be full-time rock stars, but for now we all have day jobs. In no particular order, we're a cook, an IT guy, and two Java developers.

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Tell us something personal about you.

Um... no.

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Who did your website, because my grandmother could have done a better job?

Kurt did. Let me rephrase. Kurt, who has no web-design experience and a paltry knowledge of html, did. So, I guess the real issue here is: how much does your grandmother charge for web design? Sidenote: Kurt's a moderately twisted individual, so hunt around the dark alleys of the site and you may find some interesting things there.

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Who is R. Goodson and why are you playing his songs? Does he know about this?

Full disclosure: no one has any cause to ask this question since we don't have any music posted yet, but when we do, you will see him credited from time to time, and this will be why.

Rob Goodson was another friend from college and was playing guitar with Kurt back before the formation of the band. He was also in the aforementioned 4DW. He moved to Texas to pursue the whole life/career/family triumvirate, but several of the songs he wrote with Kurt survive and we play and distribute them with his knowledge and blessing.

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So who REALLY writes the music?

All songs are an equal collaboration between all four members. Each person contributes 1/4 of every song, and we mete this out rigorously. Ri-gor-ous-ly.

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What's _______ about?

We would never sacrifice our artistic integrity by explaining ourselves to you. Well, that's not true, but we don't like to clutter up the site with anecdotes and behind-the-music stories. Well, that's not true either. Actually, we'll get individual song pages up when we have more music up. Fair? We thought so.

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Will the music always be free?

Who knows? From a certain way of thinking, all music has been free since 1997. As for our business model here--it's completely untested and may very well change rapidly. We're the first to admit that we don't have a very thorough idea of what's going on the music industry, or if our experiment here will even work. But we've always had the attitude of "well, shoot, I can do that", so we're confident that we can make this happen one way or another. But to answer your real question, if we think we're going to start charging for downloads, we'll warn you. Or maybe we won't.

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Can I burn CD's and share the mp3's with friends?

No. Well... no. We love the sentiment, but if we say yes then technically we're authorizing you to distribute our product for free and we sacrifice our own publishing rights. Blame the lawyers. Or, instead, send your friends to our site so they can download them for free from us directly. Arbitrary? Yes. Stupid? Kinda. We're sorry.

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Can I use your music in my student/indie/youtube film?

Probably. If this is for educational purposes, then we'd love to support you in that. If you think it might be commercial, contact us first. Basically, if our song gets you paid, then it needs to get us paid as well. Otherwise, we're not too picky. Even if you're making a guerrilla-style self-funded commercial film and think the song would help but just can't afford to pay for it, contact us. We sympathize with other independent creative types and may be willing to contribute something for zero payment or deferred payment. Unless you're Uwe Boll.

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Can I book you at my venue/party?

It's possible. E-mail booking@blindsatellite.com to find out.

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Do you have a newsletter I can sign up for?

No, because we hates newsletters. Sign up for the RSS feed on our Blog Page if you want to stay up-to-date, or just check the blog every couple of days. Any major announcements or updates will get a mention there.

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